


Surrender

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: A Thousand Sons, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Road Trips, WIP in the sense that this was originally intended to be a much longer thing, but I have no memory of where I was going with it next
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 17:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9334382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: Magnus surrenders to Russ on Prospero.





	

Russ had said ‘please’. Under the dark cloud of the magnitude of his miscalculations, Magnus found it easier to say he didn’t understand his brother in the least. Every time he thought he’d gotten him figured out, and the crude barbarian really should have been easy to figure out, he did something entirely contrary to expectations or sense.

He had expected Russ to be gleeful, vindictive. He’d been waiting for an excuse all along, wanting this. He would rejoice at an opportunity to humiliate Magnus and his sons, heap insult and threats upon them and try to rile them up to fight so the full leasing of the Wolves could be blamed on their resistance. They were the Wolves of Fenris: like a storm, like a floodgate; they were the Emperor’s Executioners, who embraced their duty; they were superstitious barbarians ready to shout ‘witch’ at anything they didn’t understand.

He had never seen Russ so... not apologetic, not tentative, not hesitant, so... subdued. Careful. Tightly contained. He was boisterous with those he liked, Magnus had heard, as loud as his volcanic temper with those he quarrelled with. This Russ was quiet, spare with words.

It went against their nature for one primarch to submit to another in any way--perhaps that was the source of much that had happened since Ullanor--but... Magnus could almost pretend he was an honoured guest aboard Russ’ flagship as they returned to Terra.

Maybe he was misinterpreting them again, but he didn’t think so. What little he’d seen of Russ hadn’t been filled with scorn or posturing. His brother, he’d called him carefully, was his _guest_ until they reached Terra as well as his prisoner, words fraught with meaning. Prospero was under blockade and Magnus had ordered his sons to stand down, but Russ had too, to wait and watch and fight no wars without him unless against a new enemy. He’d growled deep in his throat at a casual insult to the XVth, and at that sign of his displeasure Magnus hadn’t heard another since, though the Wolves spoke to him little.

Russ didn’t impose his presence on Magnus’ borrowed space, but that was almost worse. It made Magnus want to go to him, but he had to resist that. This was not the sort of brother he could unburden himself to. He knew from Nikaea and Ahriman’s rage at betrayal that anything he said would be used against him. Yet they had gone so long brooding over each other with no dialogue between them until, well, until moments like this.

Perhaps they would have reached Terra in such an unresolved and precarious state, but things were not to be that simple.

‘Calm the storm,’ the Navigator demanded. Lady Belisarius moved with the predatory stalk of the Wolves, feral and aggressive. No delicate noblewoman of the Terran court for Russ. Powerful for a Navigator, he’d never met one so strong in raw power and so sloppy in its use, but of course no threat to him, even if her gifts hadn’t been so single-purpose.

‘You think I went along with you because I intended for this ship to never reach Terra?’

Actually, none of the conspiracy theories in her mind were so well-formed. Just an all consuming anger that the Immaterium might try to shape itself to act against her and her ship, a violent desire to go for the throat of an abstract concept, but Leman had called for him. She didn’t know either if that was in blame, but she assumed.

Magnus followed the woman to the bridge of the _Hrafnkel_ half from curiosity, half from a desire to make his brother not try to make something of it by dragging him there. Russ intercepted them just outside, though, giving Magnus only a brief glimpse of the iridescent colours distorting reality around the battle-barge.

Seemingly ignoring Magnus, he and the Navigator conversed animatedly in one of his Fenrisian tongues. He didn’t need the specific words to follow the general idea that she was insisting she could power through and he was refusing to her arrogant assertions, not with his pack at stake, not with her well-being. He would, if he needed to, he was a warlord of ice and blood, but not yet.

He sent her on to the command deck, and turned back to the other primarch. ‘We need to talk.’

He had been expecting this and dreading this, and now they were to be distracted by yet another misunderstanding between them.

Russ lead them to a currently unused chamber. It lacked the personal intimacy of being Russ’ own chambers or other space particular to him, but it had the usual reek of stale dog and dander that went wherever the Wolves did, their crude decorations and trash of old rag and pelt and rotting chunks of food that had gotten stuck in one crevice or another.

‘I didn’t--’

‘Send away your fleet in order to lure and ambush us here?’

‘Yes,’ he said, which sounded rather stupid and unbelievable for its flatness as an answer.

‘I believe you.’

‘I--What?’

‘I can smell the truth on you.’

Of all the ridiculous, imagined...

As if he had heard him begin to speak, Russ replied, ‘You think me a fool. Don’t deny it--I know, and I know I’ve encouraged it, too much perhaps. I am not. I am a primarch. I see a trap not of my making and I dislike it.’

It was his mistakes and his debt come due. ‘I did not cause it, but it is because of me. I cannot be allowed to reach Terra.’

‘Why? What did you do? What are you going to do?’

‘You would not understand and I cannot be allowed to explain to any who would.’

‘I don’t need a confession of guilt. I know you’re guilty, and I know you know. You did not back down to move the battlefield and crossfire from your home to here. You did not submit to me from politics. You knew I was coming. You know why the order was given, and you agree.’

He had expected to die. He had been ready to die, ready to let it happen. ‘You were supposed to remove me.’

‘Constantin Valdor was sent with me to speak with the voice of the Emperor.’ Magnus started, wondering why he hadn’t seen him, before Russ continued, ‘He lied to me and I killed him.’

That was Russ, so utterly sure of himself to make that sound casual. It wasn’t even a confession made to draw out some dark secret of Magnus’ in turn; it was, to all indications, something he planned to announce before the Golden Throne at the first opportunity and in almost those words.

‘Magnus, I need to know. What was worth that? What is trying so hard to turn us against each other? What wants us to be the weapon wielded against each other?’

Alone with his brother, together as they had never been meant to be, Magnus found himself with one final chance to make his words heard. Too late, too late almost certainly, but... ‘There is ruinous power in the Warp, brother, and it has me, but not completely yet. It has me, and it has Horus.’


End file.
